The Toronto Star ran an article today about Progressive Conservative MPP Bill Murdoch’s opinion that Toronto should become its own province. Mr.Murdoch is a representative for the Bruce-Grey-Owen-Sound riding, making the “radical pitch” at a meeting of the Bruce County Federation of Agriculture.

Saying that rural Ontario is fighting a losing battle against urban-centric Toronto, he argued that the big city ignores the voices of the rural community. The only way to give farm folk a voice, he says, is a constitutional amendment to allow Toronto to become the 11th province.

As the Star points out, the province of Toronto would become the fifth-largest in the country, with 2.35 million more residents than the tiny province of Prince Edward Island. It’s operating budget of $9.2 billion also dwarfs PEI’s 2009 budget of $1.5 billion six times over.

But Mr.Murdoch’s proposal is far from “radical”, and has been pitched many times before. Notably, I raised the possibility back in September of 2007 after Mayor David Miller was threatening tax increases on the city of Toronto. At the time, Toronto’s budget shortfall was $575 million, no small amount, even for a province.

As I noted at the time, the deficit can’t all be attributed to the city. It’s a fact that Toronto is the taxpayer cash cow for the federal and provincial governments, and the so-called “fiscal gap” continues to this day, despite the equalization payments after Ontario become a “have-not” province in 2008. Toronto sends $11 billion more to the province of Ontario and Ottawa in income and sales taxes than it gets back.

My co-blogger from 2006, Joseph Lavoie, who also won CBC’s Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister that year, proposed the viability of “city-states”, rather than a separate province altogether. Although he may have disowned this idea since [the article no longer appears on his website], he did a great deal of research at the time.

As Joseph pointed out, in 1861, six years before Canada came into confederation, 82% of the population in Ontario lived in rural communities. It would make sense, then, that our constitution was written to specify powers for the federal government and provincial governments, without much in the way of municipal powers. 149 years ago, the idea of metropolises with 2.5 million citizens was only the stuff of science fiction. In the year 1800, the British city of London, the central authority of the world’s superpower, was comprised of a mere 861,000 souls.

Much has changed since 1861, of course, bringing almost a complete reverse of the demography. Now 85% live in urban centres in Ontario, with just 15% making up the rural community. So how does one balance the needs of the 21st century urban population with that of the smaller rural communities? Joseph Lavoie wrote:

The compromise then was the idea of creating a city-state within a province. So Toronto would still be part of Ontario, but it would have way more autonomy than it currently enjoys. As a city-state, it would have control on immigration, direct taxation powers (probably an ability to generate revenue from a sales tax, or even income taxes), public transportation, labour laws, property and civil rights, perhaps even solemnization rights — this is all up for discussion. The City-State would share jurisdiction with the province on matters of Health, Transportation (driver licensing etc) and education, and it would share immigration with the federal government.

The basic idea is that by allowing the cities to focus on their demands, the person who lives in Timmins, 700km away from Toronto, doesn’t have his tax dollars going toward LRT in the big smoke. It also frees up the province of Ontario to deal with smaller cities and towns, rather than constantly being pestered by Toronto for more money.

As Joseph put it, it is a simple recognition that “the closest level of government should be the one best-suited to serve the voters’ needs.”

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The Facebook Page for “I support the Province of Toronto”